Music education undergraduates’ construction of music teacher role-identity

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore Chinese music education undergraduates’ music teacher role-identities. Data were collected through focus groups and individual interviews. A qualitative content analysis, using McCall and Simmons theory of role-identity as the theoretical framework, revealed that each of the 25 students’ imaginative view of self as a music teacher was an ongoing process of negotiation during their undergraduate education. Students were consistently negotiating the content of their own music teacher role-identities through balancing their needs for rewards from others and their own self-support. Students described the conventional character of a teacher as being respectful, responsible, and fair and the role of a teacher as acting professionally in music and teaching through cognitive role-taking and improvisation, as well as expressive enactment and negotiations. Students were active agents in constructing their role-identities, bringing their own idiosyncratic interpretations to music teacher positions. McCall and Simmons’ prominence and salience hierarchies helped understand how students valued their music teacher role-identity, compared to their other role-identities. Implications and suggestions for music teacher education policy and practices in China and in other countries are discussed to facilitate undergraduates in constructing music teacher role-identities.

Keywords

Music education undergraduates music teacher education music teacher role-identity socialization

Introduction

University music education programs serve as a “symbolic community” where music education undergraduates are socialized by “insiders” and members of the community to learn the symbols of teaching and develop an identity as a teacher (Cox, 1994; L. A. Dolloff, 1999; L’Roy, 1983; Parker & Powell, 2014; Roberts, 1990). Undergraduates integrate into the social group of music teachers by learning to adopt, develop, and display the conventional norms, expectations, skills, and knowledge of teacher roles (Isbell, 2009; Mark, 1998; Roberts, 2000). Since they hold “lay conceptions of teaching” (L’Roy, 1983), these ideas are often partial or underdeveloped as they progress through their college education and experience social interactions with their professors, peers, and in-service teachers, those seemingly “outsider” ideas become more similar to those held by professionals, the “insiders.” Eventually, those undergraduates “who develop a strong professional self-concept [in the program] may experience a smoother transition from learner to professional than students who either maintain lay conceptions of the profession or whose professional self-concepts remain weak” (Froehlich & L’Roy, 1985, p. 65).

Many Western music teacher educators are interested in examining how music education students make sense of themselves as a music teacher throughout music teacher preparation programs (Ballantyne & Zhukov, 2017; Bernard, 2005; Bouij, 1998; L. A. Dolloff, 1999; L. Dolloff, 2007; Draves, 2014; Hess, 2013; Isbell, 2009; Pellegrino, 2009; Prescesky, 1997; Regelski, 2007; Roberts, 2007; Rowley, 2012; Tucker, 2020). On the other side of the world, while China’s modern music teacher education has developed dramatically since the mid-1980s, Chinese music teacher educators have almost exclusively focused on investigations of what Chinese music teachers should do (Bennett & Meng, 2016a, 2016b; Zhang, 2018). Few studies have applied a sociological and psychological approach to examine how Chinese preservice music teachers make sense of themselves: who they are and why they do what they do as a music teacher. Chinese music teacher educators have many unknowns about the social and psychological development of Chinese music education students and the ways they make meaning about themselves as a music teacher. My interest and curiosity about identity pushed me to go beyond simply identifying what Chinese preservice music teachers should teach, already know, and how they teach what they know. As Britzman (1991) said, “Learning to teach—like teaching itself—is always the process of becoming: a time of formation and transformation, of scrutiny into what one is doing, and who one can become” (p. 8).

Purpose of this study

The purpose of this study was to explore Chinese music education undergraduates’ music teacher role-identity. I applied McCall and Simmons (1978) theory of identities and interactions as the theoretical framework to guide my investigation on three research questions: (1) How do Chinese music education undergraduates describe their music teacher role-identity, specifically, their imagined character and role as a music teacher? (2) How do they construct their music teacher role-identity throughout their undergraduate music teacher education? (3) Where do they place their music teacher role-identity in relation to their other role-identities, and why?

McCall and Simmons’ theory of identities and interactions

In the late 1970s, McCall and Simmons published their book, Theory of Identities and Interactions. In it, they discussed their theoretical and philosophical understanding of role-identities, helping academics to understand how human beings construct role-identities within society through symbolic interactions and socialization. In this study, I used McCall and Simmons as a theoretical framework to analyze the students’ developing music teacher role-identities.

Roberts (1990), Bouij (1998) and Draves (2014) applied McCall and Simmons (1978) concept of role-identity in their studies to help them understand students’ views of themselves as a music teacher. However, none of these researchers applied the entire McCall and Simmons theory in their research to understand music teachers’ constructions of music teacher role-identities. McCall and Simmons’ full theory helped me to understand how prospective Chinese music teachers constructed their music teacher role-identity—who they are as a music teacher, as well as their role-identity in relationship with the society.

Role-identity

According to McCall and Simmons, a role-identity refers to “the character and the role that an individual devises for himself as an occupant of a particular social potion. More intuitively, a role-identity is [one’s] imaginative view of himself as he likes to think of himself being and acting as an occupant of a particular social position” (p. 65, italics in the original). Character refers to the individual’s “distinctive organization of such personal characteristics as appearance, mannerisms, habits, traits, motives, and social statuses” (p. 56), that is, who the individual perceives himself/herself as being. Role is the person’s “characteristic and plausible line of action truly expressive of the personality of that character” (p. 56), or what the individual does. Social position refers to categories—such as naming, classification, placement, or social group—that people develop or invent to facilitate human identification.

A role-identity contains both conventional and idiosyncratic contents (McCall & Simmons, 1978). On one hand, as the person is irrevocably a member of his culture, individuals acquire and conform to the conventional content of a role-identity, including the norms, standards, values, and expectations that people commonly share, understand, and ascribe to that social position. On the other hand, the person also has the agency to bring their own idiosyncratic understandings to the social position. “The relative proportion of these two aspects of role-identity varies from person to person, and from [role-identity to role-identity] for the same individual” (p. 68).

Dynamics of construction of a role-identity

Like other symbolic interactionists (Mead, 1934), McCall and Simmons (1978) believed that a person’s role-identity is constructed via two interactive processes which shape the content of one’s role-identity: cognitive processes in interaction and expressive processes in interaction. First, the person engages in cognitive interactions to interpret another’s role, through the perceptual processes of role-taking and improvisation of role for self. Second, the individual participates in expressive interactions to enact their imagined role-identity as responses to others. These important others as audiences are “whose evaluations and appraisals of this role could be expected to count” for the person (p. 75).

It is possible that audiences may or may not “read” the person’s expressive enactment of their role-identity as the person intended it; they may or may not accept the person’s character and role or believe the person is the type of person they claim to be. In this case, both the person and the others engage in negotiations for some sort of compromise, taking place both consciously and unconsciously. In any negotiation, the person engages in a process of reconciling their improvised role-identity with their audience’s demands and expectations, and with the demands of their own interests and preferences. As a result, a person’s role-identity is a “compromise definition of the role and character of each [that] is not executed in a single step but is the eventual result of a complex process of negotiation or bargaining” (McCall & Simmons, 1978, p. 137).

Prominence and salience of a role-identity

Everyone assumes multiple role-identities as they occupy, or “aspire to occupy, or [have] fleetingly imagined [themselves] occupying,” multiple social positions (McCall & Simmons, 1978, p. 73); however, not all role-identities are equally important and compatible. Each person organizes their role-identities into two hierarchical identity-sets: the prominence and salience hierarchies. The prominence hierarchy represents one’s “ideal self,” reflecting how they like to see themselves primarily, given their desires, or what is essential to them for an enduring time. The salience hierarchy, representing one’s “situational self,” shows the person’s preferences for role-identities that they choose to enact in a given situation. The organization of both hierarchies depends on both negotiations with self and important others, and on the amount and types of desired reward that is obtained for enacting one certain role-identity.

Three types of rewards are often at stake in every human encounter: (1) self-support, (2) social support, and (3) intrinsic and extrinsic rewards (McCall & Simmons, 1978). Self-support refers to “the degree to which the person himself supports his own imaginative view of his qualities and performances as an occupant of the given position” (p. 74); this includes one’s own commitment to and investment in the contents of their role-identity. Social support is “the degree to which one’s view of self has been supported by relevant [others] . . . whose evaluations and appraisals of this role could be expected to count” (p. 75). Intrinsic rewards tally the gratification that individuals experience and obtain internally “from the performance of roles and the fulfillment of the corresponding role-identities” (p. 76). Extrinsic rewards are material resources, such as “money, labor, goods, favors, valued items, and the necessities of life itself” (p. 78).

Method

This study investigated Chinese music education undergraduates’ views of themselves as music teachers and their perceptions of how they constructed their music teacher role-identities during their socialization experience in their music teacher education programs as well as their private and field-teaching experiences that happened outside of the programs. Qualitative inquiry was a beneficial approach for this study because it helped me to explore these students’ images of themselves as music teachers through hearing their stories and constantly asking probing questions. A qualitative approach enabled me to locate patterns in the students’ narratives and further interpret “the meaning, for participants in the study, of the events, situations, experiences, and actions they are involved with or engage in [to become a music teacher]” (Maxwell, 2012, p. 30).

Research sites

Mainland China has a total of 12 conservatories, compared to a total of 115 normal higher education institutions including 42 normal universities and 73 normal schools (The Ministry of Education China, 2022). All prospective music education majors in China must take both an Arts exam and a Higher Education Entrance exam to be considered for college admission. Normal institutions usually require a higher score on the Higher Education exam, but accept a slightly lower score on the Arts exam, than conservatories.

Current music teacher preparation in China’s higher education system is dominated by normal higher education institutions with a smaller proportion of students prepared by conservatories. There is little research on these conservatory music teacher education programs. My intention of this study was to hear voices and stories from the conservatories’ music education undergraduates who are the minority group of preservice music teachers in China.

Participants

Rose and Lavender Conservatories of Music (pseudonyms) both provide 4-year music teacher preparation programs in Mainland China that prepare the majors for teaching at elementary, middle, and high school levels. I personally knew music education professors at Rose and Lavender Conservatories and contacted them to invite students for my study. The two professors each determined which students would receive my invitation to participate in the study. A total of 25 Chinese music education undergraduates from these two conservatories participated in this study. All students had more than 6 months of authentic teaching experiences (either private or group teaching). The 11 students from Rose Conservatory were junior undergraduates who had not yet participated in student teaching. Fourteen students from Lavender Conservatory were all senior students who had finished student teaching in K-12 schools and were taking their last year of coursework.

Focus groups and individual interviews

The primary methods that I applied in this study for data collection were focus groups and individual interviews. Morgan and Krueger (1998) described focus groups as an open-ended qualitative research method that allows collection of in-depth data through group discussions on a topic determined by the purpose of the study. Focus groups help promote students’ self-disclosure when they see others in the group who resemble them in various ways. Focus groups also enabled me to explore students’ conventional understandings of music teacher role-identity—what they commonly thought a music teacher should be like. In addition, I conducted semi-structured interviews in order to take a closer look at different students’ idiosyncratic understandings of music teacher role-identity—how students’ personal interpretations of the music teacher positions were related to their own background and experiences.

Focus groups

I conducted three focus group interviews at each conservatory in person in December 2019. As Krueger (2014) suggested that “small group of four to six participants are easier to recruit and host and are more comfortable for participants” (p. 82). Each of my focus groups consisted of three to six participants who concentrated in different areas in music education (i.e. voice, piano, other instruments, pedagogy, and theory). I used a similar question list for each focus group; each session lasted 3 hr and was audio-recorded. Data saturation was reached—“the point where [I] was not gaining new insights” (Krueger, 2014, p. 72)—based on the numbers of participants and the time given to each focus group. I, as the moderator, maintained a less dominant position within the conversations, listening to the students’ group discussions and giving them space and respect for sharing.

Semi-structured interview

Individual interviews followed 3 months after the completion of the focus groups. I aimed to obtain an in-depth understanding about students’ idiosyncratic understandings of themselves as a music teacher. In the focus groups, I asked two non-leading questions to help understand these students’ primary role-identities: (1) “Imagine that you encountered a stranger. How would you introduce yourself to him or her?” and (2) “Who do you see yourself as right now?” I did not intend either question to lead to a specific answer such as “I see myself as a teacher, or a performer.” Rather, these questions were intended to provide students opportunities to imagine and place themselves in situations where they could describe how they wanted to be seen by others. Their answers fell into three groups: 13 students viewed themselves primarily as a music teacher, five saw themselves predominantly as a performer, and another seven students thought neither role-identity was dominant. To represent these three groups, I invited five students to each participate in a 60-min one-on-one video call interview: two who viewed themselves primarily as a music teacher, another two who viewed themselves predominantly as a performer, and one student for whom neither role-identity was prominent.

Data analysis

Data for this study comprised recordings and transcripts from the focus groups and individual interviews, field notes, and research memos. Field notes taken during focus groups interviews mainly focused on my observations of students’ interactions with each other, their key words for character and roles, and their direct quotes. I wrote research memos after each interview to help keep track of questions and insights. I also use memos to reflect on my own goals for research and to separate my personal experience and biases from those of students in the study (Maxwell, 2012). Trustworthiness was achieved by listening to all discussions with an open mind—not objecting to anyone’s opinions.

I applied qualitative content analysis for data analysis. It is a method that is specifically used to explore patterns in text data and to lead to a further examination of the data to explain why these patterns occur in the ways that they do (Morgan & Krueger, 1993). Counting keywords and sentences was the first level of my qualitative content analysis. The summarized patterns within the text “[led me] to the crucial further step for interpreting the pattern that is found in the codes” (Morgan & Krueger, 1993, p.115). Students in this study used similar Chinese terms and sentences repeatedly in describing the characters and roles of a music teacher they wanted to become, which formed patterns within the text. For instance, 18 students used the term “being respectful (尊重人的)” and 14 students used “being responsible (负责任的)” to describe their commonly accepted characters and roles of a “good” music teacher. By interpreting the meanings of these keywords and sentences, I then developed an overall picture about the image(s) of a music teacher that these students commonly accepted and wished to become.

Findings

In this section, I discuss findings relevant to the three guiding research questions based on my understanding of McCall and Simmons (1978) concepts of role-identity, cognitive and expressive processes in interactions, and prominence and salience hierarchies.

Music teacher role-identities

All 25 students of this study appear to have developed images of a “good” music teacher that they expected themselves to become. They shared a common, or conventional, understanding that a “good” music teacher should possess the character of being respectful, responsible, and fair and should enact the role of teacher by acting professionally in music and teaching. Each student also appeared to be an active agent, bringing their own idiosyncratic understandings (McCall & Simmons, 1978) to the characters and roles of the specific music teacher position. In the following paragraphs, I detail these students’ conventional and idiosyncratic understandings of a “good” music teacher.

Character

Most students thought an ideal music teacher in their mind should be responsible, respectful, and fair. A majority of students alleged that “being responsible” was a key characteristic for an ideal music teacher—one who plans and prepares lectures appropriately and is willing to spend time ensuring the material is understood by the students. RongRong from Rose Conservatory demonstrated her understanding that being a responsible music teacher means “the teacher not only takes good care of the students who are ‘excellent’ but also pays the same attention to the needs of those who are ‘less excellent.’” Moreover, many students believed a “good” teacher should show learners respect at all times, including tense moments of conflict; they said that the teacher should never yell at learners nor show a consistent negative attitude toward learners. Brad advocated that being respectful should be a two-way street, “All music teachers should expect their students to be respectful to them, so do the learners. Teaching would become much more effective when [the teacher] earns a class’s respect.” Winnie offered that “being encouraging” could also be a way of showing respect to learners. In addition, a group of students emphasized that the character of being fair is important as well. Gale, RongRong, and Whaley interpreted being “fair” to mean that it is essential that a teacher ensure equity to learners by providing help, care, or resources based on the needs of the learners. Emily suggested that fairness also means a balance of power between learners and the teacher.

Role

All 25 students stated that the role of a “good” music teacher includes acting professionally both in music performance and in teaching. However, their understandings about the two roles diverged depending on their preference of the future career. Eleven out of 25 students primarily see themselves being a private instrumental music teacher for their future career. These students were all junior undergraduates who have not yet participated in student teaching. They emphasized that acting professionally in music means the music teachers must be highly skilled performers. PengPeng described his understanding: “If a voice teacher sings well, they may or may not be able to teach well. However, if a voice teacher doesn’t have sound singing, they definitely cannot teach well.” These students seemed to be more skill-centered teachers who think acting professional in teaching means to set educational goals for learners mainly upon improving learners’ performing abilities.

On the other hand, 15 out of 25 students who said they would be interested in teaching either private or group position as their future career seemed to be more pedagogy-centered music teachers. (14 of them were senior students who had finished student teaching in K-12 schools: only one was a junior who had not yet participated in students teaching.) These 15 students advocated that it is not necessary for every music teacher to become highly skilled performers. For them, the goal of music learning should go beyond simply teaching an instrument to focusing on learners’ feelings and emotions (e.g. joy or disappointment), behaviors (e.g. active engagement), and development of learners’ other abilities (e.g. collaborative work and creativity) through de-prioritizing performance-centered teaching and learning. These students perceived as fundamentals for music teaching knowledge that included group classroom management, as well as knowledge of learners—understanding young children’s cognitive development to meet learners’ varied learning pace and abilities (Shulman, 1987). It is possible that the students’ prior teaching experiences in private or K-12 not only helped increase students’ confidence and shaped their music teacher role-identities for different positions. It also may have influenced these students’ prominent teacher role-identity (Schmidt, 1998).

Dynamic constructions of music teacher role-identity

The 25 students in this study constructed their own music teacher role-identity(ies) throughout the music teacher education programs through both cognitive and expressive processes in interactions with important audiences. All students reported they were constantly observing (i.e. cognitive role-taking) two types of role-models in their college programs: (1) college studio professors and (2) pedagogy professors. They internalized what they perceived as “desirable” and “undesirable” characters and roles of these role-models. Students then improvised their own preferred music teacher role-identities through expressive processes. For those students who participated in student-teaching, they also perceived their cooperating music teachers as a third important role-model for role-takings.

Students’ role-takings, on one hand, focused on general characters, such as these role-models’ attitudes, values, personalities, and educational goals. On the other hand, these students had their own selective interests of role-takings from different types of role-models. For instance, many students intended to observe and learn from studio professors specifically for one-on-one private teaching, and from pedagogy professors and/or cooperating teachers’ roles for interacting with young group learners and with their specific school contexts. Those who had participated in student teaching reported they learned most from observations of, and ideas from, cooperating music teachers about how they incorporated national standards within their lesson plans, how they accomplished their teaching missions, and how their teaching performance and learners’ learning outcomes were evaluated by the school.

However, not all students were satisfied with their role-taking experiences, as they felt their role-models often failed to demonstrate the characters and roles of the specific music teacher position. For instance, all students felt their college studio professors only provided models of becoming better performers themselves, rather than showing them the pedagogical aspect of their role, including how to teach, what to teach, and why to teach aspects of music specific to the different ages and abilities of learners. Similarly, these students believed their pedagogy professors mostly lectured about concepts or histories of teaching methods, and failed to demonstrate how to instruct a general music or an ensemble course. These students reported that they did not have opportunities to observe sufficient teaching examples from these pedagogy professors, nor did they obtain sufficient hands-on practice opportunities in their 4-year music teacher education programs.

As a result, whenever these students engaged in either private or group music teaching activities, they perceived discrepancies (McCall & Simmons, 1978)—they either failed to meet their own expectations for themselves as a “good” music teacher or others’ expectations for them to behave as a “good” music teacher in the other’s view. FangFang, for instance, felt that she had failed to adequately meet her self-expectations when teaching private piano lessons for beginners. “I did not transmit ideas accurately to learners and was not able to organize my own teaching content appropriately through professional discourses.” Linda described the ways her own teaching diverged from parents’ expectations. “I wanted to practice the learner’s problem-solving ability by having the boy figure out the rhythm and keep the tempo independently. However, the learner’s parents complained about my method and deemed me unqualified.” These students reported they tried to negotiate their characters and roles of their music teacher role-identities with those who interacted with them and who challenged their enactment of music teacher role-identities. In addtion to their college studio professors, pedagogy professors, and cooperating music teachers, these students also cited their important audiences as their own learners, learners’ parents, and themselves.

Findings of this study showed that each student was challenged to balance the question, “What parts of my teaching are negotiable to keep everybody and myself satisfied?” Jenny expressed concerns: “I did not know to what degree or how much autonomy I should give [to my students]. The class was a mess.” In addition, these students were often in less powerful positions in their negotiations, which undermined their agency to “shape or control others’ behaviors in the direction most profitable to [their] own desires” (McCall & Simmons, 1978, p. 146). RongRong, for instance, perceived that learners’ parents had more power than she did. She originally believed that the purpose of learning music was for learners to enjoy it. However, RongRong found the learner’s parents expected her to train their children to win the piano competitions and to pass examinations. RongRong said, “I had to go with the parents’ aspirations. Otherwise, I was not the type of teacher they wanted to hire.”

Almost all students in this study considered their failures to be a “good” music teacher as the fault of inadequate role-models and insufficient curriculum in the program. However, Molly wondered about the long-term influences of these negative role-models. “We disagree with many aspects of our studio professors or school cooperating teachers’ behaviors. . . . But have we ever thought or wondered, are we going to be just like them? I wonder if these teachers once were us, who had their own creative ideas for teaching, who were passionate about being a ‘good’ music teacher. . . . So, the question for us is, are we going to become just like them?”

Prominence of music teacher role-identity

Each individual student of this study held multiple role-identities, such as daughter/son, music teacher, pianist, and voice teacher role-identities. Not all identified music teacher role-identity as their primary role-identity. I asked questions, “How would you like to introduce yourself to a stranger?” and “How do you see yourself?” 13 students identified themselves predominately as a music teacher, saying similarly, “I would say ‘I’m a music teacher.’” Five students saw themselves primarily as a performer, responding, “I would say ‘I’m a singer.’” The rest of the students had difficulty identifying a primary role-identity, saying, “em. . .I am not sure. . .,” or “I might say I do music-related business.”

How these students ranked the prominence of their music teacher role-identity, and their willingness to enact it, depended on negotiations between themselves and others for obtaining three main types of rewards: (1) self-support; (2) social-support; and (3) intrinsic and extrinsic rewards (McCall & Simmons, 1978). To demonstrate this, I describe how one student, RongRong, enacted her music teacher and performer role-identities in different situations for obtaining rewards.

Before RongRong entered the music teacher education program, she dreamed of becoming a music teacher. Her parents were RongRong’s financial and spiritual support that allowed RongRong to take piano and voice courses without extra worries. After RongRong entered the program, however, she perceived that most situations occurring in the program required her to make her performer role-identity most salient. RongRong said, “I have to meet the performance-based goals . . . and the [music teacher education program] evaluations for assessing a [music education] student’s achievement was based on our performance abilities.” RongRong perceived she had few hands-on teaching opportunities in the program to practice her character and role as a music teacher.

To practice her music teacher role-identity and gain financial support for herself, RongRong had been teaching as a private piano and voice teacher for 2 years. When teaching, RongRong felt she obtained various rewards that encouraged her to place her private music teacher role-identity as the most salient. For instance, RongRong felt she gained intrinsic rewards including feeling more confident in teaching and having a sense of self-esteem and pride about herself as a studio music teacher. She said she also received social-support from her learners and their parents that helped her confirm some of the characters and roles that she imagined for herself as a music teacher. In addition, RongRong said she earned extrinsic rewards of payment from teaching. Through these experiences, RongRong felt she became more committed to the music teacher roles that she expected of herself.

In some other off-campus situations, RongRong chose to place her performer role-identity at the top of her salience hierarchy. She actively engaged in singing at bars and social parties. She said she enjoyed singing and described receiving many intrinsic rewards; she found a passionate way to express herself, show off her singing abilities, and delight those who listened. RongRong said she also received social-support from her audiences, including praise and confirmation. She was given extrinsic rewards such as flowers, gifts, and payment, and in turn, RongRong said she felt these extrinsic rewards increased the degree of her intrinsic gratification and self-support as a performer.

RongRong’s experience was representative of how these 25 participants chose to prioritize and enact their music teacher role-identity in different situations. It seemed that each one’s prominent role-identity might not always be the most salient if they felt it was not the most beneficial to enable them to gain their anticipated meaningful rewards. RongRong’s example demonstrated that students’ prominent and salient role-identities both result from compromises that they made within a given context, through negotiations between themselves and others.

Discussion and implications

The 25 music education undergraduates in this study were beginning to outline the characters and roles of the music teacher that they expected to become throughout their music teacher preparation programs. However, all these students seemed to develop a vague and ambiguous view of how to be and act as a “good” music teacher to meet both their own and important audiences’ expectations. Students of this study stated that their identified role-models (i.e. college studio professors, pedagogy professors, and cooperating music teachers) often did not allow them to observe and internalize the “desired” aspects of both private and group music teachers’ characters and roles, so they lacked adequate role-taking opportunities. Neither did these students have sufficient opportunities to expressively enact their improvised characters and roles of their music teacher role-identities throughout their teacher preparation programs. It is possible that the two conservatory music education professors’ choice to invite only senior students who had completed student teaching (Lavender Conservatory) or junior students who had only experienced private teaching (Rose Conservatory) to participate in my study also influenced the findings, that 14 of the 15 students who identified K-12 teacher as their prominent role-identity had completed student teaching. Overall, these students seemed to lack opportunities to modify their content of music teacher role-identities through negotiations with others and themselves. Students of this study appeared to have obtained little knowledge from their teacher preparations about how to negotiate the distribution of power among themselves and other audiences, especially when their enactment of music teacher role-identity was not accepted by others.

Music education programs, either in conservatories or in normal institutions in China, play an essential role in socializing music education undergraduates to construct a sense of music teacher role-identity, for either private or group music teacher positions. The findings of this study indicated that Chinese music teacher educators may consider creating more situations either inside or outside of the program to enable students to observe and internalize others’ music teacher characters and roles, improvise the content of their own music teacher role-identity, and enact and negotiate their role-identities with others and themselves (McCall & Simmons, 1978). Chinese music teacher educators, for instance, may consider offering videotaped case teaching examples (Barrett & Rasmussen, 1996), or regular in-person and peer-teaching observations (Isbell, 2009; Schmidt, 1998) for students to observe, interpret, and extract diverse desired and undesired aspects of music teacher role-identities from a variety of role-models in order to improvise their own. Music teacher educators may also consider increasing expressive practice for students to enact and negotiate their music teacher role-identities with their important audiences, such as diverse forms of peer-teachings and earlier authentic teaching opportunities (Draves, 2014). Moreover, more guided discussions and in-depth interviews are critical to support students’ development of music teacher role-identity (Schmidt, 2010; Stegman, 2007). Music teacher educators can consistently challenge students to answer what, how, and why questions in reflecting on their experiences of teaching and in developing their views of self as a “good” music teacher. Findings of this study also indicated that music education majors’ role-identities for the “ideal self” (the most prominent role-identity) and the “situational self” (the most salient role-identity) are not fixed but change depending on their own interpretations of the situation, of themselves within the situation, and of the opportunities to obtain their desired rewards. Given that, music teacher educators, especially, those who have been identified as role-models by music education students such as studio and pedagogy professors, may consider providing students with their desired rewards and support in order to help shape these students’ music teacher role-identities throughout teacher preparations.

In addition, findings of this study indicated that not all these conservatories’ music education students plan to become a group music teacher. In contrast, a large group of students expect to develop their private music teacher role-identity as their future career because they see there is a growing demand for private music teachers. China currently has approximately 40 million learners (including both children and adults) taking piano lessons, which is about 80% of all the piano learners in the world (Sixiang Studio, 2020). Chinese music teacher educators and policy makers might need to reconsider the curriculum design for music teacher preparation in order to match the current and future needs of society in China. Chinese music teacher educators may consider offering methods courses for both group and private music teacher preparation.

Overall, music teacher educators may use McCall and Simmons’ full theory to help understand how Chinese music education undergraduates (not only from conservatories but also from normal universities) view themselves as music teachers (i.e. the conventional and idiosyncratic character and roles they expect themselves to construct), how they construct this music teacher role-identity throughout their music teacher preparation (i.e. through perceptual role-taking and improvisation, and expressive role-identity enactment experiences), who they view themselves primarily to be (i.e. the most prominent role-identity) and when they want to enact that role-identity (i.e. the most salient role-identity). This ultimately would help music teacher educators to better support music education undergraduates to build up a sense of music teacher role-identity that allows them to confidently choose and enact that as a situational self to respond to different situations.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-ijm-10.1177_02557614231171649 – Supplemental material for Music education undergraduates’ construction of music teacher role-identity

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-ijm-10.1177_02557614231171649 for Music education undergraduates’ construction of music teacher role-identity by Chengcheng Long in International Journal of Music Education

Supplemental Material

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Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-ijm-10.1177_02557614231171649 for Music education undergraduates’ construction of music teacher role-identity by Chengcheng Long in International Journal of Music Education

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-3-ijm-10.1177_02557614231171649 – Supplemental material for Music education undergraduates’ construction of music teacher role-identity

Supplemental material, sj-docx-3-ijm-10.1177_02557614231171649 for Music education undergraduates’ construction of music teacher role-identity by Chengcheng Long in International Journal of Music Education

Footnotes

Ethical statement

This article, “Music Education Undergraduates’ Construction of Music Teacher Role-Identity,” is a summary of my dissertation, which I defended in January 2021. I am submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. I have the rights in the work, and that I do not include reproduction of any copyright works not owned by me.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Chengcheng Long

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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